Art

Art Overview

At St Augustine’s, we believe that high quality art lessons will inspire children to think innovatively and develop creative technical understanding. We believe that as the children progress in learning, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. Through the study of specific artists or form children will broaden their understanding, skills and knowledge to enable them to reflect upon how art and design has both shaped our history and contributed to the future creativity around the world.

In Art, children are expected to be reflective and evaluate their work, thinking about adaptations and how they can continually improve their work. As pupils progress, they should think critically and develop a greater understanding on how art is formed and evaluate and appreciate their own work and the work of others. We are committed to ensuring children receive a rich art curriculum and that children have the opportunity to visit specialist organisations and collaborate with professional artists.

We aim to provide a curriculum that allows each child to express their own creativity, originality and creative abilities through broad balanced units. These provide the opportunity for children to explore a breath of art techniques and a range of media, medium and materials, whilst building resilience.

Mrs West

Art Co-ordinator

Early Years

Art in the early years children focus on exploring art techniques, developing early skills and exploring colour, materials and tools used in art. These aspects link with the specific area of learning, Expressive arts and design, creating with materials and being imaginative and expressive.

Throughout the early years the children have daily opportunities to develop their understanding of art and design through the exploration of colour, materials, texture, using and applying various techniques, questioning, designing, adapting and looking at form and function. The children also take part in focused art lessons and the whole school project Take One Picture where they focus on famous artists and develop their skills and acquire specific knowledge through an enquiry question.

Physical development plays an important part in the early development of art skills. We believe that focusing on fine and gross motor control will lead to the competent use of all hand held tools including pens, pencils, scissors, paintbrushes and sculpting tools.

Key Stage 1

Children in Year 1 will continue their artistic journey with their enquiry question ‘How are colours created? This allows children to study the artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, looking at the colours used in his work and explore how colours can be made. Children begin to learn the skills needed to identify and explore primary and secondary colours, specifically when creating a self-portrait. From Year 1 the children focus on specific art skills and how they can be developed, progressed and applied. Each enquiry question is linked to a type of art and an artist, exposing children to a wide variety of art, styles and culture. The children will also study the picture released by the National Art Gallery for ‘Take One Picture’ and the artists Andy Goldsworthy, Georgia O’Keeffe and Anni Albers.

Key Stage 2

As the children move into Key Stage 2 they continue to explore enquiry questions, focus on key artists and build their knowledge and skills. The children now begin to progress the skills and techniques previously covered, focusing on style, technique, ideas and inspiration, refining their work and looking at perspective. The children apply these skills to different themes and genres, taking ideas and inspiration from other artists work and incorporating them with their own thoughts and ideas to create their own art. At this stage we believe it is important for the children to focus on analysing, adapting and evaluating their own work. The children spend time trying techniques, adapting their work to make improvements and building resilience.

Subject Coverage

Whole School Events

Each Spring the whole school takes part in the national gallery ‘Take One Picture’ project. Take One Picture is a national programme for primary schools, which aims to inspire a lifelong love of art and learning. Every year, one picture from the collection is used to inspire cross-curricular work in primary classrooms. This allows the children to focus as a whole school on the same artist but varied elements of art. Children across the school share a common theme in their learning and build progressive art skills whilst allowing children to interpret the picture in their own way, giving the children the opportunity to express their own ideas and interests.